Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads

The Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park in last weekend's storm.Credit
John Minchillo/Associated Press

THE signs seemed to point toward the end of Occupy Wall Street. The day after the city stripped the protesters encamped in Lower Manhattan of their generators and fuel, the Northeast was hit with a bone-chilling snowstorm that blanketed their tents and tarps with sleet and ice, and left at least one protester hospitalized for hypothermia. Yet the encampment at Zuccotti Park endured.

Seven weeks in, the protest has become a fact of life in New York City, a tourist draw to rival ground zero, and a teachable moment for parents. Its slogan, “We are the 99 percent” is a staple of the popular discourse.

More than $500,000 in donations has flowed to the protesters in Lower Manhattan, while labor unions and elected officials have come to their aid. Marches and occupations that have sprung up nationwide have served as a national microphone for the cause.

And yet, winter looms and authorities in other cities have been cracking down on encampments, sometimes violently. The mayor’s patience with the occupation seems to be wearing thin, and local residents have tired of the headaches associated with the protest. An influx of outsiders to the park, meanwhile, has threatened the protesters’ ability to organize.

More broadly, the protest’s leaderless and nonhierarchical structure raises the question of how effective it can be. The demonstrators have yet to proffer clear demands and have rejected any involvement in electoral politics. And it remains to be seen what will become of the action should they lose their foothold at Zuccotti Park.

If the question used to be “What do they want?” it has shifted in recent days to “How long will it last?”

Trouble in the Camp

When protesters first unrolled sleeping bags and blankets in Zuccotti Park on the night of Sept. 17, only a few dozen people spent the night. Now, upward of 200 people — students, veterans, train-hopping travelers — stay overnight in the sprawling encampment of tents and tarps that covers the granite expanse of the park. Sleeping in Zuccotti once was evidence of a deep commitment to Occupy’s politics, but now, some people seem to be there mainly for the donated clothes and free food.

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The police presence.Credit
Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press

A few have gotten into fights or have been accused of assaults, including Tonye Iketubosin, a 26-year-old man from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who frequented the park for about a week and whom the police charged on Wednesday with sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman in a tent there. On Thursday, a Florida man was arrested after being accused of punching a protester in the eye.

Many protesters say the lawless visitors constitute a tiny fringe and are not representative of the movement, which, they say, has espoused nonviolence and mutual aid. Some have suggested moving the kitchen area and the comfort station out of the park to discourage freeloaders from congregating there.

But there are concerns that even if the criminal and antisocial elements are a small minority, they are becoming visible enough to tarnish the image of the entire group.

“We have a serious problem with hangers-on,” said Patrick Bruner, 23, a protester and spokesman. “We’re trying to bring people into the fold instead of willfully excluding them.”

The assimilation tactic has only partly worked, as some visitors have resisted inclusion. Several protesters said they believed that the group could rise to the challenge of keeping the park safe, just as they took it upon themselves to scrub it in mid-October when its owner, Brookfield Office Properties, complained that the area had not been washed in weeks and the city threatened to evict the protesters.

But that task has been complicated because Zuccotti Park is obliged through an agreement with the city to remain open 24 hours a day. The protesters can no more forbid certain visitors than the police can ban the protesters.

Hero Vincent, 21, who is from North Carolina and is a member of the park security team, said he had begun offering a blunt opinion when discussing how to handle such people.

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MANY VOICES A meeting of the protesters in October.Credit
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

On Monday, a group of four local government officials sent a letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, insisting that he address the rising tensions in Lower Manhattan.

Some protesters were still using the streets as toilets, they complained. Drumming was disturbing nearby residents. Long lines of barricades were making the sidewalks feel as congested as cattle drives. The city should enforce noise and sanitation laws more strictly, the letter said, and take the barricades down.

But should it kick the protesters out? Adamantly no.

“The quality of life needs to be solved but should not be an excuse by those unsympathetic to the message or the protesters’ First Amendment rights,” one of the letter’s authors, State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, said.

That conflicting message mirrors the neighborhood’s deeply mixed feelings about the protest. Community Board 1, which represents the area, recently passed a resolution to support Occupy Wall Street. Loving the protesters and hating the problems that have accompanied them “are not mutually exclusive,” said the community board chairwoman, Julie Menin.

“Half the residents are completely out of their minds and need Occupy Wall Street to leave immediately,” said Patricia L. Moore, who lives near Zuccotti Park and also leads the Quality of Life Committee for the community board. “And half are residents who came to the last meeting and said, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ ”

Ms. Moore said that most of the residents’ complaints were less about Occupy Wall Street’s presence than about getting the city to make life better for the protesters and the neighborhood.

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David Graeber, an anarchist and anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, is credited with suggesting that “we are the 99 percent” become the movement's slogan.Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

“It’s not about getting them out,” Ms. Moore said of the protesters. “It’s about public officials doing their jobs.”

Officials said they were responding. A police spokesman said several summonses had been issued. Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for City Hall, said the city was working closely with the community to address its complaints. On Wednesday, most of the barriers in the area were taken down, though some went back up when it seemed the protesters might march.

As for bathroom access, though the city had long been saying that portable toilets could not be installed on the sidewalks because there was too much foot traffic in the area, Occupy Wall Street announced on Friday that it had reached a deal for 24-hour access to a loading dock in the area where three portable bathrooms would be installed, along with round-the-clock security.

Not all residents embrace the protesters. Several people who live nearby and said they supported Occupy’s overall message said they nevertheless believed that the group had overstayed its welcome.

But Mark Scherzer, a lawyer who lives and works near the protest site, said Occupy Wall Street had become a scapegoat for broader neighborhood issues. The near-constant drilling of bedrock by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was worse than any drumming, he said, and the need for bathroom facilities had mushroomed before the protesters arrived.

“While O.W.S. has brought more people to the neighborhood,” he wrote in response to the officials’ letter, “so has the 9/11 Memorial. All of them need to use toilets.”

‘We’re All Leaders’

Perhaps most puzzling to outsiders, and maddening for the police and City Hall, has been the protest’s lack of official leaders.

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Justin Wedes rallied protesters.Credit
Alex Fradkin

“Leaderless is a funny word; we don’t have leaders, yet we’re all leaders,” said Jackie DiSalvo, who is on the protest’s labor outreach working committee and teaches English at Baruch College. “It doesn’t have a single hierarchical leadership, but there are a lot of people exerting leadership over what’s going on.”

The template for Occupy Wall Street was cast in its earliest days, when activists gathered in Lower Manhattan in early August in response to a call from the Canadian magazine Adbusters. At first, the initial meeting was dominated by a traditional protest group, with banners and speeches. But a small group of people broke off and sat in a circle on the grass a short distance away. David Graeber, an anarchist and anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, was among them. The “horizontals” as Mr. Graeber called them, reject a top-down “vertical” leadership structure.

At that meeting and the subsequent ones, everyone was free to talk, and a facilitator moderated the discussion, a format that has continued for Occupy’s nightly meetings. Decisions required talking until, Mr. Graeber said, a consensus that “most people like and everybody else can live with” was reached.

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As the protest’s numbers swelled, this devotion to ensuring that everyone was heard resulted in unwieldy meetings lasting hours.

One night in mid-October, hundreds of people had gathered, trying to agree on whether to buy brewing equipment, coffee and tea. Queries were fired from the crowd:

Would it be fair-trade coffee?

Could they avoid using disposable cups?

How would they chill the milk and cream?

An hour later, the same proposal was still being debated.

“Can’t we just make a decision?” a young protester whispered to his girlfriend.

Recently, the protesters voted to revamp the process: the general assembly would still decide broader issues, but representatives of smaller groups would form a “spokescouncil” to handle day-to-day operations. The change was voted on last weekend. Some opponents feared that the general assembly would lose power. Others worried that small groups would gain a disproportionate voice.

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AGENDAS A man burning money.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

“Mikhail Bakunin warned us of the hierarchy of bureaucrats,” one participant cautioned the group, citing the 19th-century Russian anarchist.

“We really are trying to arrive at a solution right now; otherwise there are endless meetings,” someone replied.

A few minutes later, more than 90 percent of the group voted for the new framework.

The protesters say the horizontal structure must remain. And far from being weaknesses, they say, their lack of hierarchy and the absence of concrete demands have helped fuel their growth.

“It has allowed Occupy Wall Street to pop up in all these different cities where the occupations, the needs and the populations are different,” said Willie Osterweil, 25, one of the protest’s first organizers.

Not having leaders has also made the movement difficult for authorities to pin down. When Brookfield Office Properties sent in workers to distribute fliers detailing new rules banning sleeping bags and tents, the protesters folded the fliers into origami. When the police wanted to communicate their demands, the protesters gave them no face or body to negotiate with. When the police entered the park in the protest’s early days, the protesters followed them with cameras and lights, calling their photographers “the coparazzi.”

“The police are absolutely actors in this theater production,” said Justin Wedes, a protester who has worked with the culture-jamming pranksters the Yes Men. “They are onstage with us, and the world is who is watching.”

Question of History

But will the world continue to pay attention if wintry weather or an influx of outsiders or a city-ordered eviction results in the protesters’ losing Zuccotti Park, their physical and symbolic heart?

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Patricia L. Moore of Community Board 1 discussed the effect on the neighborhood.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Or as Marshall L. Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard, put it, “Is it a moment or is it a movement?”

For all the symbolism now attached to it, the park’s selection was almost accidental. Protesters had originally zeroed in on Chase Manhattan Plaza, at the foot of a soaring skyscraper on William Street, for their encampment. But after discussion of the choice on a listserv, fences suddenly appeared around the space. Zuccotti was one of a few possible locations, selected more or less on the fly on the day the protest began.

“We marched up Broadway and held a general assembly there and decided it was nice,” Mr. Osterweil said of the group’s arrival.

Some academics say that while the occupation of the park was a good tactic, it is time to move beyond it.

“It’s not a tactic that puts any pressure on the 1 percent,” Jeff Goodwin, a sociology professor at New York University, said. “It’s inconceivable that the movement can get what it wants without engaging legislatures.”

The protesters have made it clear that they have little interest in electoral politics, though. Several said they became embittered after campaigning and voting for President Obama, only to be repeatedly let down.

Mr. Graeber, whose most recent book is “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” an examination of barter systems, is credited with suggesting that “we are the 99 percent” become the rallying cry for the movement. He described many of the protesters’ view in an e-mail: “Both parties govern in the name of the 1% of Americans who have received pretty much all the proceeds of economic growth, who are the only people completely recovered from the 2008 recession, who control the political system, who control almost all financial wealth.”

History has not always been kind to leaderless protests. David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California at Irvine, said that in the past, grass-roots groups with similar democratic structures — the movement against nuclear power, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — followed one of two paths. “It falls apart, or it gets seized by disciplined factions from within,” he said.

“All made big gains,” he added. “But they couldn’t survive their success.”

Yet some grass-roots movements have had potency. Doug McAdam, a sociology professor at Stanford University, noted that most groundswell uprisings did not have an organized central structure, among them the civil rights movement, the modern women’s movement and, more recently, the Tea Party. He said the protest could inspire a more concrete movement. “Successful movements start out as expressions of anger, and then quickly move beyond that,” he said. “It’s very difficult for opponents to control or repress a movement that has many heads.”

The group’s supporters, meanwhile, are waiting for the protesters’ next move — whatever it may be. “We don’t know what we’re supporting yet,” said Ed Ott, former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “But what I’m learning is that 60-year-olds don’t make revolutions; 20-year-olds do.”

Correction: November 13, 2011

Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about the Occupy Wall Street protests being at a crossroads misstated the surname of a senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard, who commented on the protest. He is Marshall L. Ganz, not Glanz. The article also misstated a topic of debate among protesters. They discussed fair-trade coffee, not “free-trade” coffee.

A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2011, on Page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Protest Reaches a Crossroads. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe